Super Bowl cities announced: Santa Clara to host big game in 2016

FILE - This artist rendering provided by the San Francisco 49ers on Feb. 10, 2010, shows the proposed 49ers NFL football stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. The 49ers and Levi Strauss & Co have reached an agreement for a $220 million, 20-year naming rights deal for the team's future stadium in Santa Clara. The stadium will be called, Levi's Stadium.

NFL owners today selected the San Francisco 49ers' new Santa Clara stadium to host the 50th Super Bowl in 2016, sending the nation's biggest sporting event back to the Bay Area for the first time since 1985.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made the announcement at a news conference following the vote at the league owners' meeting in Boston. The only other finalist to host the game was the Miami area.

The Bay Area has been ready to celebrate since the Florida's legislature this month failed to OK a ballot measure that would have allowed voters the chance to approve renovations to the Miami Dolphins' aging stadium -- something it needed to be considered a serious competitor. The problems in Miami took much of the drama out of today's meeting, though Bay Area leaders seemed to be taking nothing for granted until the votes were counted.

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The Super Bowl is expected to bring hundreds of millions of dollars of economic activity to the region and unprecedented attention to Santa Clara, which has a population of 118,000 and will host a game expected to draw more than 100 million television viewers. Dozens of pre-game events will be scattered around the Bay Area, with San Francisco hosting a bulk of the celebrations during the week leading up the game, as the NFL expects its golden anniversary Super Bowl to be its biggest ever.

In Santa Clara this morning, city and community leaders filled City Hall to watch Goodell unveil the winner live on television. A public celebration was set for this afternoon, likely in San Francisco, with the exact location and time to be announced soon.

After spending the previous two days practicing inside "war rooms" at a Boston Hyatt, the bid committees from San Francisco and Miami made their final pitches to NFL owners just after lunch today.

San Francisco bid chair Daniel Lure, a San Francisco philanthropist, and vice chair Joe D'Alessandro, CEO of San Francisco Travel, spoke for 15 minutes at 1:45 p.m. EDT, following a 15-minute presentation from the South Florida delegation. Both team owners, including 49ers CEO Jed York, also spoke for five minutes each, and the NFL staff gave a 15-minute summary to the owners.

Then the 32 owners cast secret, written ballots.

Dozens of Bay Area celebrities pitched NFL owners on Santa Clara. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said he was called recently by one of the people he respects most -- former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who sits on the Bay Area Super Bowl Bid Committee.

"It's just a great stadium," Kraft said.

The $1.2 billion Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, which is set to open by August 2014, was named a finalist by NFL owners in October and was first deemed eligible for a Super Bowl when the project was still being planned in 2010. In the past seven months, local leaders have raised $30 million to help pay for the game and related events, mainly from Bay Area companies such as Apple, Google and Yahoo.

The February 2016 game, officially called Super Bowl L, will mark the first NFL title game in California since Super Bowl XXXVII in San Diego in January 2003, when the Oakland Raiders were crushed by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 48-21.

The only other NFL championship played in the Bay Area was Super Bowl XIX, when -- just like today -- San Francisco beat Miami. That time, 84,059 fans packed in to the old Stanford Stadium to watch the 49ers defeat the Dolphins, 38-16, on Jan. 21, 1985. Super Bowl MVP Joe Montana led the Niners to what was at the time their second Super Bowl trophy.

No team has ever played in their home stadium in a Super Bowl.

The 49ers, meanwhile, are the odds-on favorites in Las Vegas to win the 2014 Super Bowl, which will be played at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., where the New York Giants and Jets play. The owners had also previously selected to play the 49th Super Bowl, in 2015, at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., where the Arizona Cardinals play.